These are the colored sketches for the painting I’ve been working on. At the moment, the painting doesn’t really look like either of these. It’s frustrating.

Anyway. One of the problems has been the slightly different scale of the face in these two drawings. I’ve been trying to mix and match on canvas with slightly disturbing results. For example, I really like the mouth on the lower sketch, but like the nose and eye better on the first sketch. I thought I’d be able to combine the two images on the canvas but I now think it would have been better to do a third sketch combining the elements I wanted from the existing two. I keep ending up with a small eye and very full lips which can be beautiful on people, as the model in the original cover photo is, but makes life very difficult in trying to use this flat color scheme.

Speaking of the color scheme, it’s also changed a bit. The figure is still a blood red with a red background, but the accents have all been changed. I think I’m still going to use some blue as a finishing accent on the hair, but the facial / body highlights are now a pink that kinda works with the blood red (Incarnadine for anybody with the crayola 64 pack!) and kinda…doesn’t.